World Library  
Flag as Inappropriate
Email this Article


"Secular" redirects here. For other uses, see Secular (disambiguation).

Secularity (adjective form secular,[1] from Latin saecularis meaning "worldly" or "temporal") is the state of being separate from religion, or not being exclusively allied or against any particular religion.

For instance, eating and bathing may be regarded as examples of secular activities, because there may not be anything inherently religious about them. Nevertheless, both eating and bathing are regarded as sacraments in some religious traditions, and therefore would be religious activities in those world views. Saying a prayer derived from religious text or doctrine, worshipping through the context of a religion, and attending a religious school are examples of religious (non-secular) activities. Prayer and meditation are not necessarily non-secular, since the concepts of spirituality and higher consciousness are not married solely to any religion but are practiced and arose independently across a continuum of cultures.

A related term, secularism, is the principle that government institutions and their representatives should remain separate from religious institutions, their beliefs, and their dignitaries. Most businesses and corporations, and some governments, are secular organizations. All of the state universities in the United States are secular organizations (especially because of the combined effect of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution) while some private universities are connected with the Christian or Jewish religions. Among many of these, some prominent examples are Baylor University, Brigham Young University, Boston College, Emory University, the University of Notre Dame, Duquesne University, Texas Christian University, Southern Methodist University, and Yeshiva College.

The public university systems of the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Japan are also secular, although some government-funded primary and secondary schools may be religiously aligned in some countries.

Etymology and definitions

Secular and secularity derive from the Latin word saecularis meaning of a generation, belonging to an age. The Christian doctrine that God exists outside time led medieval Western culture to use secular to indicate separation from specifically religious affairs and involvement in temporal ones.


Modern usage

Examples of secular used in this way include:

Related concepts

  • Secularism is an assertion or belief that religious issues should not be the basis of politics, and it is a movement that promotes those ideas (or an ideology) which hold that religion has no place in public life. Secularist organizations are distinguished from merely secular ones by their political advocacy of such positions.

See also


External links

  • Conference: Secularity and Religious Vitality
  • "Notes Towards a (Re)Definition of the 'Secular'", University of British Columbia Law Review, Vol. 33, p. 520, 2000
  • Research Project: Multiple Secularitiesar:علمانية (صفة)

bg:Секуларност fr:Laïc ja:世俗 nn:Sekulær pt:Secularidade uk:Світський zh:世俗

